I still remember watching the numbers climb on my first Kickstarter campaign back in 2011. By the end, I’d raised $365,000—more than five times what I’d made in my entire year as a construction engineer. That campaign became the second-most funded Kickstarter at the time, and it taught me something crucial: Kickstarter isn’t about testing ideas or making incremental improvements. It’s a sales channel for products that solve real problems.

   

When I quit construction engineering and started Peak Design, I didn’t have some grand vision of building a hundred-million-dollar company. I just wanted to work for myself, and I thought I could do it by solving a specific problem I’d encountered while traveling through Southeast Asia. My camera kept banging against my chest while I hiked with a backpack, and no existing product addressed this. That distinction turned out to be everything.

Launching when you’re done, not perfect 

Most people think Kickstarter is a place to launch an improved version of something. It’s not. When I looked at the projects succeeding on Kickstarter in those early days, they were completely novel. They didn’t exist anywhere else, and they solved obvious problems.

Before I launched the Capture Clip, I actually spent a year pursuing a different idea—an energy capture system for trains coming into stations. I had no path to market, and no realistic way to manufacture it. I pivoted to this camera clip idea specifically because it was something I could actually make and something that solved a need I knew other photographers had.

That first campaign generated $700,000 in first-year sales. We’ve now raised more than $60 million across multiple campaigns, and this year Peak Design will surpass $100 million in annual revenue. If you want a Kickstarter campaign to work, create something fundamentally new, not something marginally better.

Treating Kickstarter as a sales channel, not a testing ground

Kickstarter is a go-to-market plan with unique financial advantages that traditional retail can’t match. You give early backers significant discounts in exchange for two things. First, they pay upfront, which means you’re getting money before you deliver products. Second, they become part of an engaged community that amplifies your marketing far beyond what you could achieve alone.

This model has allowed Peak Design to stay completely investor-free for 15 years. Having an investor seems pretty akin to having a boss to me—that extra layer of people you have to answer to. I feel plenty of responsibility to my employees, but I want to maintain control over the business and its purpose. Getting money upfront from Kickstarter backers instead of waiting for traditional retail cycles means we can keep building without giving up equity. We pre-buy inventory, we maintain healthy margins, and we don’t have to answer to anyone about quarterly returns.

Mastering the omnichannel sandwich for maximum revenue

Our latest campaign raised $13.5 million, and we did something different—something that changed the entire Kickstarter fulfillment model we’d used for more than a decade. We created what we call the omnichannel sandwich. The first 1,200 rewards gave backers a small discount in exchange for first delivery of our Roller Pro bag, just like a traditional Kickstarter. Then we went live at full price in our stores and with retail partners. After that, we fulfilled the remaining “wait and save” Kickstarter rewards, which offered a more substantial discount in exchange for delayed delivery. 

If I’d waited to go to retail until every Kickstarter order shipped, we would’ve missed the entire summer travel season. We pulled so much of that revenue forward, and it’s been massively important to us just being able to make ends meet, frankly, as a company. Sales are a massive tactical undertaking, especially when you’re omnichannel. 

The key is being completely transparent about it. We communicated the plan clearly in the reward descriptions. We’ve dealt with some customer sentiment fallout, especially when our production timeline was delayed, but we managed it by staying open about our reasoning and our timelines.

Building for the long game with your backer community

Our average customer owns more than seven Peak Design products. That’s not an accident, it’s the result of treating Kickstarter backers as the foundation of a long-term community rather than single transactions.

We’ve discovered that Reddit is actually one of the most robust places where Peak Design supporters show up. We don’t show up there as “the brand moderator” trying to control the conversation. Rather, my engineers will be jumping in there, my head of marketing—everyone at Peak Design has license to get into Reddit. We’ve had Kickstarter parties with our backers in San Francisco; our stores host photo walks and artist talks. Harrison Ford has walked into our Venice Beach store three times and just kind of walked around with his hands behind his back. Nobody bothers him, but I think he gets what Peak Design is about.

The transparency extends to everything, I have not encountered a question that I won’t answer full-throated, and I can defend every decision, or when necessary, apologize. When we experience delays—which we have, because we’re making complex products that have never been made before—we’re extremely open with our customers about it.

Knowing when to break your own rules

Success requires adapting even your most successful strategies. For more than 10 years, Kickstarter backers got their products first, no exceptions. Then we changed it when we had our most important product launch in years. We needed our new Roller Pro bags to be on sale during peak travel season.

Last year, we did $92 million in sales and had negative earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) for the first time ever. We lost money and it cut me so deeply. I felt so irresponsible and so burdened by the need to turn around. 

So when we were planning the Roller Pro launch, I wasn’t going to let perfect be the enemy of good, so we made the strategic choice to serve both channels simultaneously. This year, we’re on track to be profitable again, while crossing that $100 million threshold. The omnichannel sandwich strategy is a big part of why.

It’s crucial to understand what makes products worth backing in the first place, and it’s about being willing to evolve your strategy as your business grows, even if it means breaking rules you set for yourself years ago. Catch my interview on the Shopify Masters YouTube channel to discuss the ins and outs of our community-building strategy and how we scaled to where we are today.